iTunes Frustrations

[Flamesguy_SJ]

Ok, so I got an 80GB iPod Classic for Christmas, and I've ripped all my CDs and other music onto it via iTunes. I've also lately been putting the album artwork on for all the songs, but when I go to the Cover Flow in my iPod after updating it, the artwork just shows as black. I've found different pictures, different sizes; everything. And still, some album artwork will not show up.

Another thing: I have artists who happen to have the same album name (e.g. Alan Jackson and Jessica Andrews both have an album called 'Who I Am'), and despite filling in the 'album artist' info correctly, all the songs from both albums are showing up in both places. It's really frustrating because I have a series of Greatest Hits albums by different artists, but they all end up pooled together.

Help me. Please

[photon]

Can't answer your specific concerns, but...

http://www.mediamonkey.com/

Been using this for a while and I like it, don't seem to have the same album art issues that I had with iTunes and Windows Media Player.

[Bobblehead]

Originally Posted by photon

Can't answer your specific concerns, but...

http://www.mediamonkey.com/

Been using this for a while and I like it, don't seem to have the same album art issues that I had with iTunes and Windows Media Player.

I'm surprised a program called MediaMonkey doesn't support .ape

[Kipper is King]

OK- album art initially frustrated me on my ipod touch- i had problems like what you mentioned.

First of all, don't let itunes add your album art. You have to do it yourseld cuttting and pasting from the web song by song! It's tedious, i know- but it's the only way i have gotten album art to show up for every song on my ipod- and it sticks around.

[Shawn_Cronin44]

To add art to my songs I use a program called iArt. It interacts with iTunes really well. It searches Amazon for the album covers and adds it to the songs. Other options include searching for tracks missing art work, searching for tracks with multiple art work and also includes some lyrics finding options that I haven't used.

http://www.ipodsoft.com/site/pmwiki.php?n=iart.Homepage

[photon]

Wow, great find! Thanks for sharing that.

[Shawn_Cronin44]

Another tip for iTunes users that's unrelated to album art... The Sound Check option in iTunes used to do (maybe still does) a miserable job of equalizing volume. If you're unhappy with the results of Sound Check, try equalizing the volume levels of your songs using iGain / mp3gain. It's a freeware app that does a good job. It's not especially quick but the results are well worth the wait.

http://altosdesign.com/iGain/

[Nikki]

I have a different iTunes question. Some of the CDs I burned into iTunes list the songs numerically without the name. I am hoping there is something out there so I don't have to go into each song and populate the title. Suggestions?

TIA

[gottabekd]

Originally Posted by Nikki

I have a different iTunes question. Some of the CDs I burned into iTunes list the songs numerically without the name. I am hoping there is something out there so I don't have to go into each song and populate the title. Suggestions?

TIA

I suggested this in another thread. Tried it out myself, works pretty well... http://musicbrainz.org/doc/PicardTagger

Will scan the audio, extracting a fingerprint of the song. It then searches its online database with the fingerprint, and auto-populates the ID3 tags on the MP3s. Now, I don't use iTunes myself, so I don't know if the files it rips can be read by Picard. If they are MP3s, there won't be a problem. Not sure about AAC files.